Dorothy's Tale

 Some memories we carry are not our own

you may think this so obvious it bears no mention?

But her memories seeped into me so deeply

that I can hardly distinguish them from my own.

And yet there wasn’t anything particularly

striking about the woman.

 On foggy mornings like these as I sat in a cafe

I listened abstractly as she chattered on,

 about her life, travels. It surprised me she was a doctor.

For her time it must have been rare.

She was I believe closer to seventy than sixty.

She offered that she was born in Amarillo, Texas,

 though by then she had lost her drawl but not,

 I must say, her manners.

I think her name was Dorothy but could not swear to it.

It did happen forty years or more ago. Or she could have

reminded me of the heroine of the Wizard of Oz.

These are the tricks that memory plays on us.

It amused me to imagine her as a flapper!

She was girlish for her age and gave impression she had not wed,

as her body had a wooden quality such as one not rent by childbirth?

 With each morning coffee her life came into sharper focus.

 You may well ask why I did not more directly ask her about

 her first love, her first heartbreak? I may have been distracted

or I was not then, in the habit of asking questions.

  After school, one bleak Texas afternoon

 she told me she found her house emptied

 of people and possesions

 except for a mattress on bare floor

and her saddle askew against the parlor door.

 A letter pinned had instruction but no explanation,

to sell her saddle if she could or pawn in next town

 and some bills for fare to rejoin family South.

She realized her Father had sold her horse,

and ran through the fields until she saw him,

 stand alone on the other side of fence,

looking out at meadows that had been his home.

She called out his name and softly whistled .

She stroked his forehead and soft muzzle.

They leaned against each other a long while, until dark. 

 She told me her last act had been to sweep the floors

 and wash windows, placed a jar of marigolds on window sill,

 as a small token of pride for the life she had lived.

In the morning she lugged her saddle across the fields

to the train station and bought a ticket North.

She never returned to Texas or rode a horse again…

All these years I have held these memories

for her and felt them seared in my flesh.

It seemed that she had need of a stranger’s ear,

to let go of them and to hold them close.

                                                                                                               

Antonia Baranov